


2852 Hours

by Sheeana



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Gen, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-20
Updated: 2016-06-20
Packaged: 2018-07-16 03:09:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7249642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sheeana/pseuds/Sheeana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A missing scene from Jemma's time on the alien planet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	2852 Hours

**Author's Note:**

  * For [flipflop_diva](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flipflop_diva/gifts).



Jemma floats on her back in the water, and stares up at an alien sky. She counts the stars she can see, the lights dim and obscured by the massive planet hanging between her and the rest of the universe.

On the shore, Will is dealing with the remains of the creature which had, until a few minutes ago, inhabited the water she's now swimming in – dinner, in other words, for the next five nights at least. If she had the equipment, she would have liked to study this planet's ecosystem. It's like nothing on Earth.

There was a time when she would have given anything to be here. Just to see a sight like this. Just to spend five minutes in a place like this.

Now she'd give anything to go home. To solve the puzzle, figure out where the portal will open next, and _go home_.

"Just like a day at the beach," Will remarks, as she crawls out of the pool and dries herself off with a torn, tattered piece of cloth that might have been a towel when it came through the portal years ago. Now it's not much more than a rag.

"I miss the _sun_ ," Jemma says, groaning as she lies back in the dim light cast in the shadow of the massive planet. "You never know how much you need it until you're on another planet, do you? You could feel it on your skin. You can't _feel_ geothermal heat here. Not like that."

"I can't remember what it feels like," Will admits. "One of the first things I noticed here was that it's never cold. Never hot, either, but it's not right. It's like the air's just... dead." He stops what he's doing to look at her, going quiet for a moment. "It was worse before you got here."

She looks over at him and thinks that she trusts him. The strength of it scares her. She used to have the team, and Fitz, and the lab, and missions, and the allure of things to be learned and discovered and dissected. Now he has Will. Her whole world is sitting on this one little patch of dust. It's as terrifying as it is comforting.

Sometimes she tries to picture him fitting into her life: slotting in among her friends, Fitz and Daisy and Bobbi and Mack and Will. He’d be a good fit for SHIELD, she thinks. Determined and resourceful. Independent. A survivor. The kind of person who would never falter. He'd be a field agent, and she'd be back in the lab, and life would carry on as if she'd never left.

She doesn't think about what the team will look like if she never makes it back. She doesn't think about what will happen if she's wrong and the portal never opens again. She's supposed to be the hopeful one, and she's determined not to give up.

"You're thinking about something," Will says, when her eyes meet his. She flushes, but in the low blue light, it's hard to see against her skin.

"Just thinking about going home," she says softly. "I want you to meet my team when we get there. If you like, that is."

He gives her the same look he always gives her, the one that says she's crazy, the one that seems hardened and stern but is actually blank, dimmed by the hopelessness of years spent alone on a desolate alien planet. But when he stands, he offers her his hand. She knows him well enough to know it means yes.

He doesn't let go right away. His fingers linger against her arm, and she doesn't do anything to shrug them off. There's no personal space when you live alone in a cave with someone for a month or two, Jemma has learned. Privacy stops having any meaning whatsoever. She isn't sure she minds. It's a way to take her mind off the potentially insurmountable challenges they'll be facing if they ever want to see the sun again.

"Come on," Will says, shouldering the branch that he's hung the remains of the aquatic creature over. "We should get back."

Their silence is comfortable as they walk together. It fills the emptiness of the planet, gives it colour, gives it life. It strikes Jemma then that it might not be so terrible, if the portal never opens. If this is all there ever is. She might learn to accept it.

She might even come to treasure it.


End file.
